A legal Impossibility
It is a legal impossibility that an object/symbolic entity that police departments create actually exist. Law enforcement creates an entity that tests the boundaries of semiotics. Since semiotics is easier to define by what is not rather than what is. Semiotics links linguistic and non-linguistic information to offer plausible conclusions that place the interpretation of language in a social context also known as semiosphere or for this purpose – a chat room. The recursive nature of computers allows for interesting questions regarding the believability of law enforcement’s created entity.
A referential fallacy exists – the fact that simply because an object exists, doesn’t necessarily follow that the object/symbol really exists. The entity created by law enforcement is an effort by them to deceive another party through a computational medium i.e., a chat room. The hyper-real diorama law enforcement and the second party (suspect) create only exists in a hyper-real world, therefore, a legal impossibility to show that criminal solicitation, online solicitation or that any crime occurred, It is impossible to determine the thoughts of an individual across a computational medium. Proving intent and preparation is difficult to do unless the second party (suspect) removes himself from that hyper-real medium, leaves the computer, the house and travels to a predetermined location in which case intent and preparation could be said to occur. Even so, leaving many questions unanswered.
Typically, intent and preparation is difficult to prove yet law enforcement agencies continue to push the envelope when it comes to prosecution. Law enforcement agencies go to some effort to create the elements of intent and preparation. Often times law enforcement finds itself continuing with investigations even though the elements are not present, by each party creating their own symbolic entities – already a communication problem exits confusing messages can be exchanged. For example a series of commercials create hidden messages which will either be recognized by the viewing public or not. As an example, talking infants, talking dogs, cows during commercials, do animals really speak? What are the messages conveyed?
Returning to Intent and Preparation Law enforcement is forced to create intent and preparation by suggesting to the suspect at other side of the computational medium that he is seeking the company of an underage female. The suggestion to meet with the female is a non-real event. Through mere conversation law enforcement, prosecutors, grand juries, cannot and should not true bill or prosecute such cases regardless of the dialog. Law enforcement is unable to determine the true thoughts of the suspect’s mind. The preparation is determined by getting the suspect to 1. Drive to a location, 2. Purchase items to use along with intent. So, if Joe Public (suspect) does not show up to the predetermined location then preparation is completely non-existent. Both the entity of law enforcement and Joe Public remain at the computational medium. This is to say that the umwelt created by law enforcement only existed in hyper-reality. Hence, the diorama is in fact not real! Intent and Preparation components are non-existent. What is not real, cannot become real because law enforcement makes it so. Both Grand Jury and Jury can error because of the lacking of legal sufficiency to indict and or decide on a trial.
Because the juries fail to understand the complexities of computational semiotics, Juries are unable to discern the facts of such cases – they lack the ability to understand the semiosis cycle within a digitalized environment. Juries fail to understand computational semiotics therefore, unable to make clear, true and correct determinations thus putting to question 1. How can a true bill be concluded 2. How a sentence can be handed down. Hence legal suffiency is in question! The question that must be fully understood by juries is where exactly does law enforcement’s object/entity exist, in the mind of law enforcement? In the chat room? The servers? Across the cyber medium? Where exactly do these entites exist?
Copyright©Aurelio Duarte Thursday, November 05, 2009
Why Semiotics of Law?
Because The Law is a sign - both as an institution and in its every content. Thus, every aspect of The Law involves not the dyadic relations of the physical sciences, but the triadic relations of the semiotic sciences. The proper tools of analysis are therefore Relational Algebra and Triadic Logic; and every question of legal philosophy involves the tridimensional aspects of syntactic meaning, pragmatic meaning, and semantic meaning.
The Syntactic Dimension: incorporates all of the formal structure of The Law, from the concept of the institution to the grammar of its content, and all of the meaning associated with any of these.
The Pragmatic Dimension: involves all of the structure involved in using The Law, including the Social and Behavioral Context, use, interpreter, interpretation, teleology, and spirit of The Law, and all of the meaning associated with any of these. This dimension includes such concepts as self, culture, value, goals, and ethics.
The Semantic Dimension: contains all of the structure involved in the awareness and cognitive un-derstanding of The Law, including such important concepts as individuals, generals, and universals, and all of the meaning associated with any of these.
Recent Posts
Blog Archive
